Derrike will be driving in Loudon with a special paint job for the #37 Friendly's. In a coloring contest held by Friendly's, 12 year old Seneca Tedford of Lebanon, CT won and her design will be used at Loudon.

Seneca Tedford had quite a show-and-tell scheduled for Thursday. The 12-year-old girl from Lebanon, CT, not only will make a presentation to her class, but the principal of Lebanon Middle School has invited the entire student body to the parking lot to watch it. Derrike Cope's car that he will race Sunday in the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway is the main attraction. The paint scheme and design for the No. 37 Friendly's Chevrolet are the work of Tedford.

She visited a local Friendly's Restaurant in July, and colored and designed the car as part of a promotional contest. Her entry was picked from among thousands of others. Tedford and her schoolmates will see the car unveiled and then be guests at an ice cream party hosted by the car's sponsor.

"Hey, she did a great job with her design, and she deserves to show it off," Cope said. "We might crank it for her, but I don't think the school would be too happy with us letting her take a couple of laps around the parking lot," he said, joked. The design has a royal blue base color covered with ice cream cones -- strawberry, chocolate and vanilla -- and the sponsor's logo and number are tie-dyed.

"To be honest, there were a lot of really good designs and color schemes used by thousands of kids," Cope said. "It was tough to pick just one. But this will be one nobody will ever forget."

Pre-Race

In the first practice Derrike was 43rd fastest of 48 drivers with a time of 29.605 and speed of 128.654.

Derrike went out 41st of 47 drivers to qualify and produced a lap of 29.985 and speed of 127.023. The car was wavering during the two laps. At the end of the two laps the car was in 38th position. At the end of the round, the speed was not fast enough and Derrike was left in 44th position unable to make the race.

Derrike updated us with what happened at Loudon. He said, "Again, a very disappointing outcome from Loudon. We were decent off the trailer, but kind of hit a wall as practice went on. We then had gotten a bad set of tires which we could not practice on which only left us with two sets...thus not allowing us to do a full blown simulated qualifying attempt. We then made some adjustments based on our banzai lap on 20 lap used tires. We adjusted the wrong way and when we took our attempt at qualifying we were very loose. The race track had loosened up at the same time by comments and times of the other competitors. With some of the other prominent teams having trouble like Bobby Labonte and Steve Park, we were unable to use one of our existing provisionals. The bottom line is we just have to get better on Friday's!

"Loudon was the race where the two winners of the Friendly's summer promotions were to come and enjoy the race, only to have us miss the race. The Ultimate Race Weekend winners Stan and Michele Barker spent the weekend with me and we still had a great time. Additionally, Seneca Tedford, the winner of the Coloring Contest from the Friendly's Restaurant visits, was at the race track with her family as well. On Saturday evening Friendly's catered a dinner for all of them as well as the entire team. Under difficult circumstances I believe everyone had a great time. Since we were unable to participate in the race with Seneca's design we will be taking the same car with her design to Dover so that Seneca can see her car race!

"Thanks for hanging in there with us. With the added news of Primary Sponsorship for the entire 2004 season with PHM, I am sure we can right the ship and become a lot more productive as we proceed."